Background

Ritsu Sakuma is the second born of the main Sakuma family, who was seemingly known only as “Rei Sakuma’s Little Brother” to others. As a child, he had constantly been sheltered from the outside world, depending heavily on his older brother for support when he had no one else to look to. Due to the illness that seemed to run in the Sakuma blood, Ritsu had a high sensitivity towards the sunlight, and would be prone to collapsing if he were to be exposed to the sunlight for long. Unlike others in the family, the illness seemed to hit Ritsu harder than anyone else, causing him to be sheltered in order to protect him.

Meeting Mao Isara

It was during the day when they met, with Ritsu’s hand outstretched from beyond the Sakuma household gates.

Ritsu wasn’t supposed to go out in the day, due to his sensitivity towards sunlight, and he most certainly wasn’t supposed to go out without Rei, lest he suddenly collapsed without anyone to bring him home. But Ritsu didn’t like to listen to those warnings very well, not when there seems to be a pretty red-haired boy staring up at him through his window curtains from outside the mansion’s borders. Especially when he, as a young child with no one but his older brother as his friend, was curious as to who that boy was. Sneaking out of the house is quite easy, but by the time he makes it to the fence, he’s much too exhausted from the sunlight and from walking about. Although he didn’t know anything about the person outside or the world they lived in, Ritsu called out to him when the other seemed to start walking away.

Despite everything, paired with Ritsu’s persistence and curiosity, the two clicked well.

Learning Piano

Having been sheltered within the Sakuma mansion most of his early years, Ritsu had picked up playing piano as a child. Initially, he had no teacher. He would listen to Rei who would play on the piano, then when no one else was around, he would mimic his older brother, playing the notes by ear. Although not entirely perfect, he enjoyed the sounds the piano made, and would continue this routine of his, playing the songs that Rei would play late in the night and into the early morning.

One night, Rei found him, playing away on the piano, without a care in the world. Ritsu was entranced, and didn’t notice his brother’s presence until the other sat down on the bench next to him and began playing the accompaniment to the piece he had been playing. It was fun to play the piano, he thought. To play with Rei was even more fun.

After their night of playing piano together, Rei persuaded Ritsu into being properly taught the piano. Unfortunately, he thought doing lessons were a pain and a bore, and so he simply ended up doing his own thing on the piano only after begrudgingly learning the basics to a piano. The teacher that the Sakumas had gotten for Ritsu had also begrudgingly accepted Ritsu’s behaviour after seeing his skill with the piano.

The piano was Ritsu’s solace when he was unable to join people outside, and when even Rei was unable to hold his hand and comfort him. The piano comforted him, and he loved the piano.

Trivia

• Ritsu suffers from serious abandonment issues, centered around his experiences during the War Era.
• His issue originally stemmed from Rei suddenly disappearing overseas, “studying abroad”. The change in a doting brother who had always been there for him suddenly not being around for most of the school year had been extremely jarring for Ritsu.
• It only grew worse when Leo had disappeared after the events of Checkmate. Where Ritsu momentarily thought he had found a place to lean on other people, Knights had begun to crumble with the loss of Leo.
• He used to cling tight to Mao in his younger years, and even the year before because of his experiences. Nowadays, he’s stopped doing so, but he still likes to fall back into his old habits, for the sake of being looked after by Mao for comfort.
• After the previous year and all of its events, he’s slowly learning to take care of himself, bit by bit.


• Ritsu composes on his own time. Although not as skillful as Leo is in his compositions, he still writes his own songs.
• He mainly focuses on the music aspect of songwriting, but sometimes he might write lyrics to his compositions if he’s in the mood. These usually never see the light of day.
• He won’t play his own songs for most people. The only people he’s really played his original compositions for are Rei, Leo, and Mao.


• Ritsu picked up baking as a hobby, mainly as a coping mechanism for stress.
• He’s able to make “good-looking” sweets; however, those tend to taste bland.
• His truly heavenly-tasting sweets are the ones that look like they came from some eldritch abyss.
• He likes to bake snacks for Knights, as well as the Tea Club, Occult Club, and FLAVOR. He enjoys it when people have a smile on their face from eating his sweets.


• Ritsu thinks giving people kisses platonically is sexy, and it’s even sexier when the people he kisses have connections to Rei so he can spite Rei with his achievements.
• Catch a glimpse into all of Ritsu’s thoughts about their kisses and how it happened.


• Ritsu prefers to play on a grand piano when he can, but he does own a portable keyboard for normal lives.
• His keyboard’s a Yamaha P-125.
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• By influence of his entire dorm, he’s started stepping his foot into some gaming.
• He’s normally dragged into whatever fighting game the other three are playing if they want to do teams versus, but he’s honestly more entertained by watching the rest of them play.
• He does like playing Smash Bros. though. He mains Jigglypuff, and occasionally will play as Lucas. He likes using Hibiscus Jigglypuff and Claus Lucas as alternate costumes.
• On his own time he’ll play horror pixel games, like indie games. He has a liking towards Alice Mare for its choice in BGM, and enjoys playing games like Pocket Mirror and Yume Nikki.